Washington has been told for 40 years that American farms cannot survive without illegal foreign labor.
America tried the opposite once – and it worked better than anyone admitted.
What Big Ag and the cheap labor lobby have been doing ever since to make sure it never happens again will make your blood boil.
Tom Vilsack Sonny Perdue and Brooke Rollins All Chose Big Ag Over American Farm Workers
Tom Vilsack ran the USDA for eight years under Obama and four more under Biden.
In that time, H-2A guestworker certifications more than tripled – and Vilsack stood before the Senate Judiciary Committee to personally demand amnesty for illegal farmworkers.
His argument was that the immigration system “does not work for them.”
Not for American workers.
For illegal aliens.
Vilsack never asked why farms that broke federal hiring law for 40 years deserved a path to citizenship for their illegal workforce.
He already knew the answer – and so did Big Ag’s lobbyists who helped write the question.
Sonny Perdue ran the USDA under Trump’s first term.
H-2A grew by another 100,000 positions on his watch.
He never once used the bully pulpit of the Agriculture Department to push mechanization, fund robotics research, or tell Big Ag that the cheap labor pipeline had an expiration date.
Sonny Perdue was a caretaker for a broken system and left it exactly as he found it.
Now comes Brooke Rollins.
She told America that automation is “ultimately the answer” to the farm labor crisis.
Then her administration’s Labor Department cut the wages farmers must pay H-2A guestworkers by roughly 25 percent – making foreign labor cheaper at the exact moment it should be getting more expensive.
You cannot tell farmers to buy robots while making the alternative cost less – and Rollins knows it.
The Bracero Program Ended in 1964 and Farm Automation Exploded Immediately After
Big Ag runs the same play every time someone in Washington talks about ending the guestworker pipeline.
Crops will rot.
Americans won’t work the fields.
Mechanization isn’t ready.
Big Ag delivered the same speech in 1964 when Congress ended the Bracero program – which had been importing Mexican guestworkers since World War II.
Within one year, 250 mechanical tomato harvesters were operating across California – enough to cover 25 percent of the entire crop.
By 1970, 95 percent of California’s processing tomato harvest was done by machine.
The Wilson Center’s analysis is direct: ending Bracero did more to accelerate farm mechanization than any other policy event in American agricultural history.
The technology was already there in 1964.
Modernization was being blocked by the same cheap labor pipeline that is blocking it today.
A New York dairy farmer named Dale Hemminger learned this firsthand in 2007 when ICE arrested one of his workers.
Before mechanization his farm produced 800,000 pounds of milk per worker per year.
After installing milking robots that number hit 2.5 million – and his workers earn more and work shorter hours.
One enforcement action on one farm produced a 300 percent productivity jump.
The H-2A Visa Program Is the Only Thing Standing Between American Farms and Full Automation
American tax dollars paid for what the Netherlands is now deploying at national scale.
Precision agriculture technology – GPS-guided tractors, AI-driven crop monitoring, robotic harvesters – was largely developed at American universities with American research dollars.
The Netherlands is deploying it on dairy farms.
Israel built its agricultural export economy on it.
Australia runs autonomous harvesting platforms across its grain belt.
Meanwhile American farms are requesting 400,000 foreign workers a year because Vilsack, Perdue, and Rollins have each told Big Ag that the pipeline stays open.
The American Farm Bureau will tell you that mechanization is “cost prohibitive” for small farmers.
That is a real challenge with a real solution – USDA mechanization credits, accelerated equipment expensing, shared-ownership programs for smaller operations.
None of those solutions require a permanent foreign labor subsidy.
All of them require an Agriculture Secretary willing to tell Big Ag that the deal is done.
Rollins said automation is the answer.
She needs to be held to it.
Mandate E-Verify and freeze H-2A expansion.
Pair it with real investment in mechanization – the same way Congress invested in tomato harvesters after Bracero ended.
Vilsack chose the lobbyists.
Perdue managed the decline.
Rollins is at the fork in the road right now.
The only thing standing between American farms and the 21st century is the same thing that has always been standing there – a Cabinet secretary who won’t say no to Big Ag.
Sources:
- Samantha Ayoub, “H-2A Program Use Continues to Soar,” American Farm Bureau Federation Market Intel, January 2026.
- Philip Martin, “The Bracero Program: Was It a Failure?” History News Network, July 2006.
- Philip Martin, “Mexican Braceros and US Farm Workers,” Wilson Center, 2021.
- American Enterprise Institute, “Immigration Enforcement and the US Agricultural Sector in 2025,” April 2025.
- Mark Krikorian, “Trump Plan to Cut Farmworker Wages Hurts America’s Competitiveness,” Center for Immigration Studies, December 2025.
- RJ Hauman, “The Cheap Foreign Labor Regime Blocking Agricultural Intelligence,” American Intelligence, May 2, 2026.
- USDA, “USDA Launches Farm Labor Stabilization and Protection Pilot Program,” September 2023.